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[ReindeerFlotilla]

I have never read surly vegan as a woman. Analysis of the strategically placed arms and their surroundings indicates you are correct.

[diogeneticist]

Yeah heh likewise. Until today I had assumed it was a guy, I passed the comic and had to go back to double check.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

Oh, good. I'd have felt like a terrible person if it was just me.

[TRVA123]

Well that came off rather snide.

You're the administrator. You got admin stuff to do. Did you see me saying you were wrong?

It seems like you tend to jump down people's throats a bit, RF. Maybe try giving people the benefit of the doubt that they're not attacking, insulting, or otherwise negatively commenting on you.

Whomever started the thread, people are evidently finding it interesting enough to keep it alive. If you are no longer interested in it, there is no reason to read or respond to it.

[Schwungrad]

There are two (unnamed) female characters who talk to each other (they don't hold a conversation but they do talk to each other) about something other than a man. It passes even if by technicality!

Depends... is the lobster male or female?

[ReindeerFlotilla]

Well that came off rather snide.

You're the administrator. You got admin stuff to do. Did you see me saying you were wrong?

It seems like you tend to jump down people's throats a bit, RF. Maybe try giving people the benefit of the doubt that they're not attacking, insulting, or otherwise negatively commenting on you.

Whomever started the thread, people are evidently finding it interesting enough to keep it alive. If you are no longer interested in it, there is no reason to read or respond to it.

It's physically impossible to jump down throats.

If you have a reading of "Don't fuss," that isn't infantilizing, I'd like to hear it. I don't see any other reading of that other than snide or dismissive.

I believe there was recently a moderator post stating that the WCDT thread, and the Comic Forum were not the places for personal discussions. What I may or may not seem to do sounds like it would qualify under that injunction.

[Thrillho]

Whether we were to accept that point or not, you calling it infantilising is an apt choice given that your response seems to be 'he started it.'

If you think someone is being an ass (and I sincerely doubt that pwhodges was being an ass, intentionally or otherwise) that doesn't give you carte blanche on here to respond in kind.

[Mlle Germain]

The Bechdel test isn't a valid tool to judge the quality of a particular work, but the sheer amount of works that don't pass it speaks volumes about the limitedness of female roles.

  I think this is the important point to make here!

So basically the Bechdel Test is the BMI of feminism.

This is a very nice analogy!

It is also important to note that when looking at a number of works of art at once, the question how exactly to interpret the last rule isn't really that relevant. Because if you need to argue over whether this one conversation in a 120 minute or longer movie (or several hundred page novel or whatever) makes it pass the test or not, and when this happens for lots of works of art, this is a sign that there is probably a problem -- I mean, if women were as well-represented as men, this discussion would just not arise.

That being said, QC undoubtedly passes the Bechdel test as a whole, and I very much doubt the usefulness of evaluating it page by page. Month by month or year by year is more interesting, and my feeling is that it would fail only rarely on those time scales as well.

Here is an article about films and how passing the Bechdel test influences how much money they make: http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-dollar-and-cents-case-against-hollywoods-exclusion-of-women/
TLDR: The number of films passing the Bechdel test hasn't significantly changed over the past years and is still shockingly low (around 50%).
And films with women in leading roles get by far less funding, but usually earn more money per dollar spent, i.e. are more profitable.

Here are two videos that explain the Bechdel test and also look at how the Oscar-nominated films fare with respect to it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLF6sAAMb4s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PH8JuizIXw8
I think these highlight very well how the movie industry is primarily showcasing men's stories and does not give women's stories nearly the same weight. Women-centered stories are still rare.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

And here's the reason I am not happy with this thread.

There's an actual metric that is absolutely fair, and an actual logic to why I find the question interesting. I have stated it, and I recall a mod post about repeating the same statements over and over, so I invite you to look up thread.

But between the fact that this is a snipped thread, unavoidably missing context, and the the generic title, the subject keeps roaming down the same path.

You can't have everything, a wise man once said. Where would you keep it?

On the other hand, it's not under my name any longer.

It seems to me that the objections to applying the test in any interesting manner boils to "but we know QC isn't sexist."

But of course we know that. Is it sexist isn't an interesting question, IMO. That's not interesting because QC is sexist. And queerphobic.


These are things that totes happened in the strip. It got better.

So, do we judge the strip based on a handful of examples where sexist evaluates to true, or do we assume that some of those things are character and others are the result of things Jeph didn't know?

People want a litmus test. They want a simple thing that they can point to and say "see?" But the questions the Bechdel test tries to resolve are too big for the test. There's a reason Bechdel isn't find of her own test.

But the fact that a hammer is terrible at carving turkey doesn't make it useless. Even everyone thinks it's a turkey carvers. Even if the inventor thought it might be a good way to carve turkey.

It will still drive a nail.

[Is it cold in here?]

That's not interesting because QC is sexist. And queerphobic.

what

[pwhodges]

Queerphobic: "No poo-poo on the pee-pee".  Well actually, not, but that's possibly what was thought of. 

Sexist?  It's probably possible to interpret many single sentences or even of any cartoon or book as sexist if taken in isolation; but that's neither interesting nor useful.  An example would be helpful in this discussion rather than throwing out an assertion like that.

[ReindeerFlotilla]

By the logic that QC passed the Bechdel test so end of discussion. QC has said some queerphobic things and some sexist things. It happened once, so it must be a defining trait.

Obviously not. So if it doesn't work there, it doesn't work wrt the Bechdel test.

But those things also did happen, and unlike the first rape joke they weren't unhappened. So they are a part of what QC is. You could argue that they should not count, and in someways I would agree--Pintsize once had an owners manual and it was implied that his life began when Marten took him out of the box. But the post Singularity QC retcons this to imply that Pintsize agreed to form a relationship wit Marten, which makes the out of the box thing confusing, at the least. (it's not that you can't make a case to patch the hole. It's that Occam's razor suggests the simplest explanation is that AnthroPCs were property when the former strip was written and became people by the time the latter was written. And that's okay.)

I happen to subscribe to the theory that QC is not what it was and won't be what it is in the future. So to say it passes the test or is sexist is nonsensical. One can point to a strip and make a claim, but another could point to a different strip to make a different claim. Both could be right, wrt their chosen strips. Nothing wrong with that, I guess.

[pwhodges]

It seems clear to me that we agree, and are expressing it differently.

It's simply that a developing strip by a developing artist/author has changed over the more than ten years its been running, and so it is not reasonable to judge it as a unity in respect of the Bechdel test any more than, say, its artistic style.

[Is it cold in here?]

In case anyone wonders about ReindeerFlotilla's absence, he came up with the idea of taking a break voluntarily. His login still works. He and his interesting ideas are still welcome.

[Mlle Germain]

And here's the reason I am not happy with this thread.
There's an actual metric that is absolutely fair, and an actual logic to why I find the question interesting. I have stated it, and I recall a mod post about repeating the same statements over and over, so I invite you to look up thread.
But between the fact that this is a snipped thread, unavoidably missing context, and the the generic title, the subject keeps roaming down the same path.
You can't have everything, a wise man once said. Where would you keep it?
On the other hand, it's not under my name any longer.
It seems to me that the objections to applying the test in any interesting manner boils to "but we know QC isn't sexist."
But of course we know that. Is it sexist isn't an interesting question, IMO. That's not interesting because QC is sexist. And queerphobic.
These are things that totes happened in the strip. It got better.
So, do we judge the strip based on a handful of examples where sexist evaluates to true, or do we assume that some of those things are character and others are the result of things Jeph didn't know?
People want a litmus test. They want a simple thing that they can point to and say "see?" But the questions the Bechdel test tries to resolve are too big for the test. There's a reason Bechdel isn't find of her own test.
But the fact that a hammer is terrible at carving turkey doesn't make it useless. Even everyone thinks it's a turkey carvers. Even if the inventor thought it might be a good way to carve turkey.
It will still drive a nail.

I am really confused by this post. Of course the question of whether there are sexist or queerphobic scenes in QC is a valid and interesting discussion topic and I don't think anybody was denying that.
It's just that the Bechdel test says nothing whatsoever about whether a single work of art (be it one strip of the comic or the whole of QC) is sexist or not -- there are a ton of really sexist and problematic narratives that pass the test, and a lot that are not in themselves sexist that don't. This is one of the points that has been made in the discussion! Saying that a certain test/tool is inappropriate for the task at hand does not mean dismissing the issue altogether!
I think if we want to discuss whether certain scenes in QC are problematic or not (not sure this would be a fertile discussion; I think a lot of these things have been discussed to death in the forum) we should thus do it without resorting to a test which has little or no bearing on the matter.

[chaospersonified]

I am really confused by this post. Of course the question of whether there are sexist or queerphobic scenes in QC is a valid and interesting discussion topic and I don't think anybody was denying that.
It's just that the Bechdel test says nothing whatsoever about whether a single work of art (be it one strip of the comic or the whole of QC) is sexist or not -- there are a ton of really sexist and problematic narratives that pass the test, and a lot that are not in themselves sexist that don't. This is one of the points that has been made in the discussion! Saying that a certain test/tool is inappropriate for the task at hand does not mean dismissing the issue altogether!
I think if we want to discuss whether certain scenes in QC are problematic or not (not sure this would be a fertile discussion; I think a lot of these things have been discussed to death in the forum) we should thus do it without resorting to a test which has little or no bearing on the matter.

That's the same point Reindeer was making, by way of a metaphor. They're say that using the Bechdel test to prove sexism is like trying to carve a turkey with a hammer, it's a tool being used in a way it's not intended. Just because a hammer can't carve a turkey, though, doesn't mean it's useless- it can hammer a nail.

[Schwungrad]

But once the nail is driven in to its head, hammering further will only look like an attempt to hammer the board into some shape. So, what purpose does it serve to evaluate QC strip-by-strip, after it has already been established that QC as a whole passes the test?

[chaospersonified]

But once the nail is driven in to its head, hammering further will only look like an attempt to hammer the board into some shape. So, what purpose does it serve to evaluate QC strip-by-strip, after it has already been established that QC as a whole passes the test?

Not a dang thing, so why are we here still?

[Schwungrad]

so why are we here still?

Because someone is wrong on the internet!

[chaospersonified]

so why are we here still?

Because someone is wrong on the internet!

Normally, I'm that guy, but it seems to me we all agree, QC is not inherently sexist, and while the Bechdel test proves nothing, it can suggest that a piece of work might have sexist qualities

[Thrillho]

Is the point not that a piece of work can have sexist qualities while also inherently being not sexist?

[Aziraphale]

I think it's also worth drawing a bright line between characters and authorial intent. In other words, there's a world o' difference between portraying sexist characters, or even generally non-sexist characters who are only human and therefore sometimes say sexist or otherwise dumb things, and the work on the whole (or its author) being sexist. Portraying something isn't necessarily an endorsement of that thing.

[Oenone]

One way I think QC is sometimes frustrating is that female bodily autonomy wrt to boobs is more a punchline. I'm not sure whether that's sexism tho or just a weird blind spot.

I also liked RF's earlier point that QC passes the reverse of the Bechdel far more often with a smaller male cast than it does the original Bechdel. Like, boys are hecka interesting but they do consume a disproportionate amount of the conversation

[Aziraphale]

There are certain things that get recycled a lot, and that seems to be one of them (at least as far as Faye and Marigold are concerned). Sometimes it barely registers, but there've been a few storylines (like the Lake House arc) where a character's obvious discomfort in their own body, and the jokes piled on top of it, made for uncomfortable reading (and I say this as a guy, so I wouldn't be surprised if some of the female readership might also take issue with it). The only other analog I can think of (aside from a couple of passing references to Marten's skinniness) would be a handful of jokes about Clinton's hand, but that's not even close to being the same thing.

[Schwungrad]

a handful of jokes about Clinton's hand

I see what you did there

[Aziraphale]

Didn't even realize what I'd done 'til you pointed it out.

[Oenone]

 

All this talk of Emily "realizing her power" are making me go wtf. What power, exactly?

[Kugai]

The power to cloud men's minds


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cE68oB02wbs

[Neko_Ali]

[Aziraphale]

Now I'm going to have Tim Minchin in my head for the rest of the night. Thanks.

[CM_albion]

The issue with the test, i find, is that it was designed for movies. it works fine for movies, it hits rockier ground on other types of media. something as long running as QC with a continuous story is going to pass it eventually.  it doesn't apply well to continuous media like web-comics, if only for example that the conversation that would pass the test hasn't arisen in the plot yet. yet in the time pre conversation, does the comic automatically fail the test because the tester is judging an imcomplete story?

i find it weird also when people try to apply it to Video games. where conversations not essential to the main plot of the game very rarely happen in any context, never mind the bechdel ones.

[bhtooefr]

For media like comics, where there's discrete strips, you could evaluate it on percentage of strips that pass the Bechdel (and reverse Bechedel) tests.

Screw it, I'm going to evaluate QC on that basis.